


Sometimes I'm (not) Alone

by aceofreaders (Kickasscookieeater)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmare, aftgvotes prompt, two lil cuties copin with their shit, warnings; does reference Andrews past abuse but not explicitly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 08:17:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kickasscookieeater/pseuds/aceofreaders
Summary: Once upon a time, a little boy woke up alone with foolish tears running down his foolish face, broken.Once upon a time, a young man woke up alone with a heavy head full of memories and no time for tears.Now, a young man wakes up and he is not alone.





	Sometimes I'm (not) Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I love that I've been missing since what, August? But I've been doing stuff behind the scenes and this is one of those things. This was for an AFTGVotes prompt! 
> 
> The prompt was Andreil + hurt/comfort after a nightmare. 
> 
> I hope I delivered!

Sometimes when the sun comes up, Andrew doesn’t get up with it. Sometimes, some mornings, his head is so heavy with remembering that he can’t move it off the pillow. In the past, it was Andrew alone. Andrew heavy, weighed down, trapped by himself and foreign hands he can no longer place a face to in the dark of his nightmares. These days, these heavy mornings, Andrew is not alone.

Sometimes Andrew wakes up and the curtains have been opened, there’s a coffee with eight teaspoons of sugar by the bed, and a familiar voice reminding people to kindly fuck off for the day it’s not happening.

Today is one such morning.

Andrew takes a sip of his coffee.

Andrew puts his feet on the floor, sits all the way up on the edge of his bed.

Andrew slips back under the covers.

The door opens after a little while, when it’s quiet throughout the rest of the dorm. Neil walks in silently and stoically, because he is only dramatic when it’s necessary or stupid and right now Neil is just concerned.

‘Andrew.’

He says it like he’s waking Andrew up. It usually works. But today it doesn’t get far past the fog in Andrews head.

‘I don’t want to talk.’ Andrew says. He doesn’t care if Neil heard him through the blankets because it doesn’t matter, the message will be relayed just the same.

Neil scoffs quietly.

‘When do you ever?’

He just. Doesn’t want. Doesn’t want to exist out loud at all. Doesn’t want to remember hands and cold laughs and secrets and shame and pain and blood all over himself all over Aaron all over everything and averted eyes and bruises.

But Andrew, being Andrew, has no choice but to remember.

He had been sleeping, so had Neil. But he had been dreaming too. Maybe dreaming wasn’t the right word. He had been seeing faces, he had been strapped down, he had been feeling hands and bodies, and like a child he had been looking around for someone to love him enough to make it stop. But they hadn’t been there. No one was there, just faceless hands and a crushing weight. He had been hearing his name, first in voices that made him want to wretch then in a voice so electric and familiar he almost thought it was over. But then the voice had been snatched away, gone gone gone and it wasn’t over.

Until it was. And the lost voice was found, and it had a face looking at him with bright blue eyes alight with worry from the top bunk ladder safely out of the way.

‘Andrew.’

That’s when Andrew truly woke up.

And now afternoon sunlight is streaming through the open window. At some point Neil had left, now Andrew is alone again. He can hear his voice still, arguing with Kevin outside by the Maserati. It sounds a lot like fuck you, it sounds a lot like don’t you fucking dare go up there, it sounds an awful awful lot like that violent smile is on Neils’ face again. Because Neil is sometimes dramatic when he’s concerned, too.

There was so much of it last night, in Neil’s eyes. In his voice when he said Andrew’s name. It was rich with anger, fierce with concern. His body was so still he could have rivaled Andrew’s. He had that look on his face that he gets sometimes, when Andrew hurts.

It was almost frightening.

It’s silent now, and the sun has dipped a little lower. There’s a sandwich on the side table that’s been there for a little while now probably. It looks like white bread, no crusts.

Andrew blinks.

It’s dark, and the sandwich is gone. It’s not silent anymore.

‘I just want to know if he’s okay, okay?’

‘Nicky. Trust me.’

‘Neil –‘

‘Trust me.’

Maybe Andrew was wrong. All that time ago at Eden’s. Maybe he is just fucking stupid. Because it feels as though as long as Neil is here, no one is getting through that door. And Andrew thinks that could be what safety feels like.

\--

Sometimes, when Andrew is already feeling, he looks up instead of down. He stares so hard at the sky it all starts to blend into one big infinity. He thinks of Bee, and all her techniques, counting and breathing and looking. But the first thing that ever really worked was infinity. What is a memory against that? After a while, he became so proficient at it that he could create his own infinities, his own galaxies of blank black nothingness inside his own head. He taught himself that one. Obviously.

A couple nights ago Andrew saw someone in his dreams that looked a lot like a memory.

Last night Andrew dreamt again.

Today Andrew flinched.

It was the locker room; he was on the couch, Neil was in the middle, and the space on Neil’s’ other side was suddenly overcrowded by a laughing Nicky trying to squeeze himself in. Neil had been pushed against Andrew completely, and Andrew had flinched so hard away from him he might as well have pushed Neil away.

So now Andrew is on the roof, staring at infinity.

He’s been here for a few hours or some other amount of time before Neil shows up, burning low like an ember, silent and slow.

If he was Renee he’d let Neil paint him brand new. If he was Nicky he’d let himself be kissed all over with lips and affirmations. If he was Kevin he’d drown the night in liquor and face the wrath of an empty bottle and a missed Skype call in the morning. If he was Aaron he wouldn’t say anything at all, just collapse into Neil’s arms and be held until it was over.

But he’s not. He’s Andrew Minyard and he is made of frayed nerves and sometimes touch feels like bleeding. So he lays there on the cold flat rooftop and lets the stars swallow him whole.

The thing is, Neil is not Allison or Erik. He’s not Thea or Katelyn. He’s Neil Abram Josten, a man of many faces and many agonies. He just lies there beside Andrew, a safe distance away, and fights off the hungry mouth of the night sky with his sharp eyes alone.

And he stays there. They both do. Until the night sky becomes the midnight sky. And then Neil looks at Andrew and says:

‘Drive?’

And that’s how they find themselves laying on the grass by some highway instead.

Andrew can hear the cars skidding by, and he wonders if it reminds Neil of anything like it does Andrew. He won’t ask. He kind of wants to though, which he supposes Bee would call a good thing. It seems pointless to Andrew. He already knows the answer.

Neil isn’t looking at him. He hasn’t looked at Andrew for a while now. But Andrew can feel how much he wants to. 

‘Neil’.

And there they are, those blue blue eyes like electrical fires.

There are so many things that Andrew could say. That he didn’t see Neil, that he couldn’t feel Neil, that it wasn’t his fault, that it wasn’t about him, that it was the sound of Neil’s voice that prevented something much worse.

But Andrew doesn’t have to.

He just says yes.

Neil reaches his hand through the grass and touches his fingertips against Andrew’s. It feels less like bleeding, more like a flame against the icy surface of Andrew’s skin.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Always with the stupid questions.’

He feels Neil all over, the electric shock of him spreading from their connected hands across the expanse of grass and cold and darkness until he hits those delicate nerves of Andrew’s.

He can almost feel Neil’s smile, the ferocity of him crackling in the air like a bonfire. Andrew’s vision starts to blur before he remembers to blink. He loses it completely until he remembers to open his eyes. The stars look less like stars and more like tiny little pinpricks of silver.

‘For a second there I thought you were asleep. Then I remembered who I was with.’

Foolish Neil, smirking at Andrew and laughing that laugh that hides in the tone of his voice when he speaks.

‘You can sleep Andrew.’

He says it like it’s law, like the sheer stubbornness of one patchwork man could command the very stars themselves.

Andrew closes his eyes.

\--

Neil kisses like goodbye sometimes. It would frighten Andrew if his feet weren’t planted so firmly on the ground.

It’s a Tuesday and practice has been over for half an hour already. They’re sat facing each other on one of the locker room benches. No dreams last night.

He can feel Neil’s eyelashes tangling with his, his almost sigh against Andrew’s lips. He can feel the moment Neil opens his eyes.

It’s another five minutes before Andrew opens his.

How stupid can one runaway be, to think Andrew could believe those eyes were brown.

‘How has your sleep been?’

Why must he be so still, so gentle, so unyielding?

‘You’re there every night, you tell me.’

Neil just looks, blazing, into Andrew’s tired eyes. Raises his eyebrows.

‘Better. It’s been better.’

Neil nods without seeming to notice, asks Andrew again ‘Yes or no?’.

Andrew says yes, and he doesn’t need to think about it so Neil doesn’t need to ask again.

It’s more of a hello this time, like Neil has missed him somehow.

The next one is so quiet it could be a whisper. The next is on Andrew’s nose and he doesn’t know why. The next is on his cheek and there Neil stays and there Andrew breathes until he can open his eyes again.

The important thing to remember about Neil is that it’s not the night that comes for him. Not usually. It’s the harsh light of day shining on his scarred face. It’s no shadows to hide in. It’s names no one has the right to call him anymore.

But he is no stranger to the cold of night, or nightmares, or being trapped in a memory you can’t climb out of.

He kisses the skin of Andrew’s cheek again, hands in his own lap, his lips lingering like Andrew is something precious and oh how Andrew hates that.

‘Have you been talking to Bee about it?’ Neil says, and Andrew feels the shape of the words against his own lips.

Andrew nods once, stares into the blue of Neil’s eyes.

Andrew doesn’t always care for his eidetic memory. He doesn’t always care to admit that he is capable of caring. But he also knows (and he doesn’t like to lie so he can’t pretend that he doesn’t) that he has memorised every shade of blue in Neil’s irises. The thin circle of charcoal surrounding his pupils.

He knows how much pain those eyes have caused Neil. But when Andrew wakes up and he can still taste his own pleas, those eyes are the first things to tell Andrew that it’s over. He’s safe.

For a lack of a better, less foolish, word.

He’s spoken to Bee about that too. Yesterday in fact, during a spare moment she had left for him that afternoon. About safety, about who may or may not inspire that word, about the difference between dreams and nightmares and memories.

He told her about open windows and coffee left on the bedside table, about Nicky almost barging down the damn door. He asked her why those things make him think of rooftops and open skies. He told her about infinity. She told him that infinity isn’t too far off from oblivion.

He didn’t tell her about all the different shades of blue in Neil’s eyes. Or the way Neil’s breath shakes between kisses, or about how every time it does Andrew thinks he feels it in his own bones.

‘I’m never letting you get hurt again, Andrew.’

Or about that. That stupid, reckless, hatefully protective emotion in Neil’s voice. How absolute it sounds. So stubborn.

Andrew doesn’t believe Neil has much say in whether or not Andrew hurts. But he knows that when he wakes up, heavy and lost, he won’t be alone.

And he supposes that’s enough.


End file.
